Hands up who recognises that moment of dread when you realise your toddler has been quiet too long? I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt and say the sofa was just collateral damage as she tried to colour in her hands, but still. This was our first, and was very nearly our most enthusiastic doodle of the day.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to access to art materials. There’s merit in children being able to access materials at all times to reduce barriers to self-expression – why should adults be the ones to decide when and how children are able to express their thoughts and feelings? Under the UNCRC children have a right to express themselves and be heard, and particularly when a child is non or pre-verbal, the arts are an important tool for meeting that right. It makes sense that they should have access to means of expression at all times.
There’s also merit in the idea that when materials (or musical instruments or other resources) are presented as something exciting and special, children will value them more, and be more likely to use them and respect them. Familiarity breeds contempt, with materials being ignored or abused. Or in our case, soft furnishings being abused.
In all seriousness, I have a lot of empathy for her – why is it OK to paint on the easel but not on the frame of the easel? Or if your adults think “ah stuff it, let her paint on the frame of the easel”, why is it not OK to paint on the kitchen doorframe? Tonight, she gave me a new question to ponder: is it OK to doodle on the inside of the easel?
She had been playing with her Duplo and I’d been doodling away on the whiteboard hoping to draw her in again. I even tried to revisit the hilarity of trying to attach bits of toy to a drawing:
No. Longer. Funny.
I did successfully tempt her to add to my awesome doodle of a sheep (hers is the faint scribble at the bottom of the frame, her main motivator was an insistence the sheep needed blue feet but for the purposes of this exercise I don’t know how to draw blue feet)
Nothing was really holding her attention until she discovered the space inside the easel, where she promptly started doodling away.
When I peeked my head round, she explained what she was doing:
Oh hi Mummy! We inside a boooootiful tent with drinks and plates, we having a picnic. It so cozy!
You can’t argue with that, can you? At the end of the 30 days I’m going to read back and see how many times our doodling ended because imaginative play took over. One might expect her creative energy would be re-directed from one form of expression to another while taking part in this challenge, but if anything it seems to be encouraging more creative play of all kinds.
doodleeverydaychallenge 